Part 46 (2/2)

Callon was startled out of his wits. Detection he had always feared; he had sought to guard against it by the use of every precaution known to his devious strategy. But it was detection by Pamela Mardale and her friends, who had once already laid him by the heels; the husband had never entered into his calculations. He had accepted without question Millie's version of the husband--he was the man who did not care. In some part of the world he wandered, but where no one knew; cut off from all his friends--indifferent, neglectful, and a fool.

Even now he could not believe. This might be some new trick of Pamela Mardale's.

”Your wife!” he exclaimed. ”That is not true.”

”Not true?” cried Tony, in a terrible voice. He stretched out his arm and pointed towards Millie. ”Look!”

Millie flinched as though she feared a blow. She dropped her head yet lower. She held her fingers over her eyelids, closing them tightly.

She had looked once at Tony's face, she dared not look again. She sat in darkness, trembling. One question was in her mind. ”Would he kill her?” Callon looked at her as he was bidden. Millie was wont to speak of her husband with indifference, and a suggestion of scorn. Yet it was her manifest terror which now convinced Callon that the husband was indeed before him. Here the man was, sprung suddenly out of the dark upon him, not neglectful, for he had the look of one who has travelled from afar very quickly, and slept but little on the way; not indifferent, for he was white with anger and his eyes were aflame.

Callon cursed the luck which had for a second time brought him into such ill straits. He measured himself with Tony, and knew in the instant that he was no match for him. There was a man, tired, no doubt, and worn, but hard as iron, supple of muscle and limb, and finely trained to the last superfluous ounce of flesh; while he himself was soft with luxury and good living. He sought to temporise.

”That is no proof,” said he. ”Any woman might be startled----” And Tony broke fiercely in upon his stammered argument--

”Go out,” he cried, ”and wait for me!”

The door was still open. Outside it in the pa.s.sage the waiters were cl.u.s.tered, listening. Inside the room Millie was listening. The order, roughly given, was just one which Callon for very shame could not obey. He would have liked to obey it, for confronting husbands was never to his liking; all his art lay in eluding them.

”Go out!” Tony repeated, and took a step forward. Callon could not cut so poor a figure as to slink from the room like a whipped schoolboy.

Yet it would have gone better with him had he eaten his leek and gone.

”It would not be safe to leave you,” he babbled. And suddenly Tony caught him by the throat, struck him upon the face, and then flung him violently away.

Callon reeled back through the open windows, slipped and fell at his full length upon the terrace. His head struck the stone flags with a horrible sound. He lay quite still in the strong light which poured from the room; his eyes were closed, his face quite bloodless. It was his business, as Mudge had said, to light amongst the teacups.

Tony made no further movement towards him. The waiters went out on to the terrace and lifted him up and carried him away. Then Tony turned towards his wife. She had risen up from her chair and overturned it when Tony had flung the interloper from the room. She now crouched shuddering against the wall, with her eyes fixed in terror upon her husband. As he turned towards her she uttered a sob and dropped upon her knees before him. That was the end of all her scorn. She kneeled in deadly fear, admiring him in the very frenzy of her fear. She had no memory for the contemptuous letters which she had written and Tony had carried under his pillow on the North Sea. Her little deceits and plots and trickeries to hoodwink her friends, her little pretence of pa.s.sion for Lionel Callon--she knew at this moment that it never had been more than a pretence--these were the matters which now she remembered, and for which she dreaded punishment. She was wearing jewels that night--jewels which Tony had given her in the good past days when they lived together in the house in Deanery Street. They shook and glittered upon her hair, about her neck, upon her bosom and her arms. She kneeled in her delicate finery of lace and satin in this room of luxury and bright flowers. There was no need for Tony now to work to re-establish himself in her thoughts. She reached out her hands to him in supplication.

”I am not guilty,” she moaned. ”Tony! Tony!”

CHAPTER x.x.xII

HUSBAND AND WIFE

The man who was no good had his triumph then. Only triumph was not at all in his thoughts.

”Oh, please!” he said very quietly, ”get up from your knees. I don't like to see you there. It hurts me.”

Millie raised her eyes to him in wonder. He did not mean to kill her, then. All his violence, it seemed, was reserved for that poor warrior of the drawing-rooms who had just been carried away stunned and bleeding from the terrace. When Tony spoke to her his voice was rather that of a man very dispirited and sad. He had indeed travelled through the mountains of Morocco hot with anger against Callon the interloper; but now that he had come face to face again with Millie, now that he had heard her voice with its remembered accents, the interloper seemed of little account, a creature to punish and be done with. The sadness of his voice penetrated to Millie's heart. She rose and stood submissively before him.

In the pa.s.sage outside the door the waiters were cl.u.s.tered whispering together. Tony closed the door and shut the whispers out. Upon the terrace, outside the window, a man was hesitating whether to enter or no. Tony went to the window.

”Who are you?” he asked. ”What do you want?”

”I am Giraud, the schoolmaster of Roquebrune,” said the man, timidly.

”I bring a letter from Mademoiselle Mardale.”

”Let me see it!” said Tony; and he held out his hand for the letter.

<script>